Walter Rilla

Walter Rilla died in 1980 in Rosenheim, Germany. He had been married twice. First he married Theresa Klausner, who died in 1948. They had a son, prominent British-based film screenwriter and director Wolf Rilla (1920-2005). Since 1959, Walter Rilla was married to the French writer Alix Degrelle-Hirth du Frênes.

He made his last screen appearance in the Thomas Mann adaptation Unordnung und frühes Leid/Disorder and Early Torment (Frans Seitz, 1977) with Ruth Leuwerik and Martin Held.

Later films include the interesting Belgian surrealistic horror film Malpertuis/The Legend of Doom House (Harry Kümel, 1971) with Mathieu Carrière and Orson Welles.

He was directed by his son Wolf Rilla in Cairo (1963).

Returned to Germany in the 1960s and wrote and directed for TV.

Following his return to Germany in 1957, he began a new career behind the camera as writer/director of television plays.

He also continued to act in just about anything, from prestige films (like Confessions of Felix Krull (1957) and Scampolo (1958)) to spaghetti westerns (Day of Anger (1967)); from Edgar Wallace potboilers (The Forger of London (1961)) to returning to his villainous ways as the evil genius Dr. Mabuse in several instalments of the popular franchise.

After the war, Rilla continued his evil film ways in a progression of appearances as sultans, megalomaniacs and corporate villains. Probably the most interesting of these films is the thriller Desperate Moment (Compton Bennett, 1953) starring Dirk Bogarde as a man who tries to clear himself of murder in post-war Germany. Rilla directed one film himself, Behold the Man! (1951).

Though a British citizen from 1940, Rilla was unable to escape typecasting -- much like his compatriots Conrad Veidt and Peter van Eyck -- and his career was henceforth delineated by playing racketeers (Golden Salamander (1950)), Nazi propagandists (The Lisbon Story (1946)) and evil Eastern European potentates (The Great Manhunt (1950)). In addition to acting, Rilla sidelined as author of several BBC radio shows.

This was followed by roles as Prince Ernest in Herbert Wilcox's period drama Victoria the Great (1937), and as the womanizing banker Roudine in False Rapture (1939). Thereafter came a succession of villainous roles.

His breakthrough role in British films came courtesy of Alexander Korda, who was intent on casting him as Merle Oberon's brother Armand in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934).

Involved with leftist organisations and married to a Jewish wife, Rilla was inevitably forced to flee Nazi Germany for England in 1933.

He made an easy transition into sound film. He played for example Baron Hans von Velten in Namensheirat/Marriage in Name Only (Heinz Paul, 1930), Robert in Männer um Lucie/Men Around Lucie (Alexander Korda, 1931) with Liane Haid, and Lord Windermere in Lady Windermeres Fächer/Lady Windermere's Fan (Heinz Hilpert, 1935).

In 1926 Rilla starred opposite Elisabeth Bergner and Conrad Veidt in Der Geigenspieler von Florenz/Impetuous Youth (Paul Czinner, 1926), and two years later he costarred with Carmen Boni and Marlene Dietrich in Prinzessin Olala/Art of Love (Robert Land, 1928).

In 1924 he appeared in one of F. W. Murnau's rare attempts at comedy, the hilarious Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs/The Finances of the Grand Duke (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1924) starring Alfred Abel. A year later he starred opposite Jane Novak in the German-British coproduction Die Prinzessin und der Geiger/The Blackguard (Graham Cutts, 1925) written by the then 26 years-old Alfred Hitchcock.

The actor Walter Rilla began his film career at the beginning of the 20's with movies like "Hanneles Himmelfahrt" (1922).

The tall, expressively-browed, rather stern-looking character actor Walter Rilla was educated at the University of Koenigsberg and first worked as a newspaper journalist, drama critic and story editor for the Berliner Theater. He acted on stage from 1921, making his screen debut the following year. He quickly established himself as a leading player in German and French films, often playing aristocratic roles, which demanded a certain amount of gravitas.

Rilla started an art journal that included works by writers such as Bertolt Brecht, before becoming an assistant director in theater in the early 1920s. He next turned to acting, first appearing on the big screen in 1922, playing a steady stream of intelligent young men, including a turn in the F.W. Murnau comedy "Finances of the Grand Duke.".

In 1919 he founded the literary journal Erde (Earth). At the time, he was involved with the Communist Party and, when established with the leftish KAPD party.